“One of those ones with the brownie at the bottom and the three different flavors of ice-cream?” I asked. There was a chocolate cafe in town that tourists loved but that I only went to as a treat once in a blue moon.
She laughed. She knew exactly which sundae I was referring to. “And the crushed nuts on the top.”
I thought it over for a moment. “Well, I want my own,” I said, starting to follow her back toward town. “No sharing.”
It looked amazing. I thanked the waiter as he put the sundaes in front of us and I immediately reached for my spoon as Mum held back a bit.
Her tone was gentle, but her words were very mum-like in tone. She wasn’t angry. Just very disappointed in me. “You’ve barely said two words to me since we got back, Alyson.”
“I know,” I said. “I’m sorry.” The sundae was my absolute favorite in the world because it had three different flavors of chocolate ice cream—white, milk, and dark—and you could distinctly taste each one even when they got mixed together a little bit. And the brownie at the bottom was cakey and fudgy and made in-house. And it was real whipped cream on the top, not from a can. Perfection. The chocolate shop charged 12 bucks each for one, but it was well worth it. Especially when Mum was paying.
“You know, you and J have an awful lot in common,” she said with a laugh. “Both stubborn, both sulk when you don’t get your way.”
“We can both be easily swayed with bribes of food,” I said with a laugh, sticking the last piece of brownie into my mouth. I told Mum I could easily polish off another one, but she told me I would make myself sick and I should at least wait for that one to go down before I started thinking about eating anything else. It was kind of nice having my mum around, though, and getting to be the ‘child’ for once. To have someone looking after me.
Mum just seemed pleased that we were back on talking terms. She started telling me a slightly boring story about the food they had been served on the plane ride over and how she had had to send hers back when she’d ordered the vegetarian option and it had come with crab in it. “I suppose the airline thinks that seafood is vegetarian!” she said with a laugh.
I just shook my head as though I couldn’t believe the nerve of them. Mum had to be just about the only person I knew from Eden Bay who didn’t eat seafood. Most of us survived on the stuff. It also wasn’t really her style to complain or send food back. “Sounds more like something Tina would do,” I said, pushing my empty sundae glass to the side once I had scraped the last of the remaining syrup out of it.
Mum laughed at that, as Tina was definitely known as the family complainer. She was always the one who was first to call the customer service complaint line when she was unhappy about something and she would always send a coffee back at a cafe if it was too hot, too cold, too milky, or too strong. Definitely not afraid of voicing her opinion. “Yeah, well, she probably would have if she’d been there. Who knows, though? She probably made the poor stewardess’s lives hell on her own flight.”
“Sorry,” I said, interrupting her. “Tina wasn’t on the plane with you?” As far as I knew, everyone who had been at the reunion had arrived on the same delayed flight. Hadn’t that been the whole point?
Mum just stared at me blankly. She had ordered a far more conservative treat—a dark chocolate eclair with a cherry liquor filling. “Surely you knew this?” she said with a laugh. “She came a few days earlier. She would have been at the time capsule opening. You would have seen her there.” Mum just shook her head at me like I was being silly before popping the last of her eclair into her mouth. Then she looked around for the waiter to bring her the check. But I was not done. There was no way that I had seen Tina at the time capsule opening. Nope. As far as I knew, she had arrived in town the same day as Mum and Dad and Aunt Daisy and all the rest of them.
“The first time I saw Tina was at your welcome home party,” I said. “The one that turned into a surprise party for me in the end.” Ah, back in the days where my family actually wanted to see me. I remembered those days fondly.
Mum looked a little distressed about this. “Well, I guess I just assumed that Tina would have made her way over to see you and Matt at some stage.”
I had to go see Matt. “Sorry, Mum, got to dash.” I gave her a peck on the cheek. “Thanks for the sundae.”
Captain Eightball’s always sort of switched—unofficially—from a cafe to a bar after four pm, and that was when I usually tried to avoid it. Too many loud men at the bar jostling for a position to watch sports on the TV. I had to push past them to get to Matt, who was taking the caps off another bottle of beer.
I had to yell over the jukebox to be heard. “Did you know that Tina was in town for two days before Mum and Dad?”
“Don’t be silly,” Matt said, shaking his head. “Of course she wasn’t.” He handed the beer to a customer and then emptied a giant bag of ice into a bucket for two women who had ordered champagne at one of the booths.
“What do you know, Matt?”
He finally turned to me, leaned over the counter, and looked me square in the eyes. “This is insane. Why would I hide the fact that Tina was here from you? You know as much as me.” There was cheering coming from beside me as some country or other scored a six in cricket.
I can always tell when my brother is trying to hide something from me. “Don’t give me that, trying to make out I’m being paranoid,” I said. Ugh. My brother was the worst. “Claire was acting the same way. Strange. Wouldn’t quite look me in the eye. You two are hiding something from me and I demand to know what it is!” I hit the counter with the side of my fist for good measure.
His face turned completely white. Shoot. I had kind of been bluffing about them both keeping a secret from me, but now it looked like I had accidentally stumbled upon something.
“It’s just J,” he finally said, during a lull in the noise where the cricket had gone to a break and the jukebox was playing a slow song. “She is upset about Maggie coming back.”
I frowned. “But we don’t even know if or when Maggie will be arriving. And why would she be upset about her mum coming back anyway?”
Matt sighed. “Because she thinks that things will change.”
I understood all that and it was something we needed to talk about. But just in that moment, I had a more pressing matter I needed to discuss. “So you definitely didn’t see Tina in the two days before Mum and Dad got here?”
Matt looked completely frustrated with me. “What does that even matter?”
“Because lives could be in danger, Matt, as a matter of fact.” I started to climb off the bar stool but got jammed by the man sitting beside me.
Matt just took it as an opportunity to trap me into a lecture. “Is this still about that letter, Alyson?” It is always bad when Matt calls me by my actual name. “You know there are more important things than that going on at the moment. Like the problems with your niece. But, no, you don’t want to worry about that. You’d rather go off on some farfetched scheme than worry about your own family.”
“Wow. For your information, Matt, this is exactly why I am worried about the letter. For my family’s safety. And Claire’s life might be in danger too.”
That seemed to shut him up for some reason.
13
Claire
“So lovely to see you, Claire,” Rhonda said, welcoming me into the store as she lit another candle. The one I had bought for the bookstore actually smelled incredible and was worth every penny. It had even covered up the scent of those horrible musty books that Maria had insisted on clogging up the library section with. I was going to buy another candle from Rhonda at the end of the night, as soon as the intuition class was done.
“There’s no need to be nervous, dear,” Rhonda said with a knowing smile. She must have seen the apprehension on my face.
“I’ve, er, just never done anything like this before.” And never thought I would. But with only two days to go till the deadline on the letter, I was willing to try
anything. I didn’t know anyone here, so no real harm could be done to my reputation, right? I handed over my money to Rhonda and she assured me that by the end of the session, I would be able to tap into the feelings in my body at any time in order to know what was true and what was false.
“I hope so,” I said, ready to take a seat on one of the cushions.
Rhonda grinned. “Oh, good, your friend is here.”
I spun around and saw a young woman with long, unbrushed golden hair sauntering in without a care in the world. Oh no. Alyson.
“Buying another scented candle?” she called out to me, trying not to laugh.
I quickly reached for one to try and make it seem like that was all I was doing and almost knocked over an entire display. Then I realized I was already wearing the name tag that Rhonda had written out for me and stuck to my chest. “Ahem.”
I knew she’d been to see Matt earlier that evening and I had no idea what he may or may not have said about the kiss. I hadn’t spoken a word to Matt since it happened. Which was strange in itself. I’d been avoiding him. But even though we hadn’t actually discussed not telling anything to Alyson, I had really hoped we were on the same page. Alyson knowing would be a disaster. I’d never hear the end of it for the rest of my life. So I held my breath as she approached me.
I had to admit what I was really there for. No, not another scented candle. I tried to straighten up the candles I had knocked over. “Fine. I’m here for the intuition workshop.”
There was a look of glee on Alyson’s face as she cried out, “I knew it!” Then she went to say hello to Rhonda and I overheard Rhonda give Alyson a discount, seeing as it was her tenth workshop in a row.
I exhaled. Relief. She definitely didn’t know about Matt. There was no way she could just sit quietly on that kind of information.
I took a seat in the circle with Alyson beside me. I was a little nervous about what the workshop would entail and for some reason, Alyson sitting beside me made me feel more on edge, not less. This was definitely her area of expertise, not mine.
Rhonda started to give the instructions on the first activity. We were supposed to close our eyes and focus on the feelings in our stomachs. Mine was feeling empty seeing as I’d had to skip dinner to be here on time. I opened one eye and peered over at Alyson to my left.
“So I went down to the park and I ran into a friend of yours. Clive.”
She opened one eye and stared at me. Then closed it again. “Great. So, you know.”
“The letter is a fake, isn’t it?”
Rhonda reached over to an old cd player and put on some chanting music and told the rest of us to get into the rhythm and to chant along with it.
Alyson breathed out. “As in, is it really fifty years old? No, I don’t think it is.” She let out a long sigh while the others continued to chant. “But someone still threatened you, Claire. And someone still threatened me.”
“I know,” I said firmly. “We’re on the same page here, Alyson. We need to start working together. You can’t keep things from me.” I stopped talking when I realized my hypocrisy.
We had to pay attention now that everyone had their eyes open again. It was Alyson’s turn to start. Rhonda asked her to share a recent story about something in her life that had led to a bit of confusion or indecision.
Alyson tucked her legs up underneath her and settled into a more comfortable position. “Well, I received this letter…” she started to say. “Or at least, someone called Alyson Foulkes did.” She told everyone the story, even though most of the town knew the basics by then. What they didn’t know about was Alyson’s internal conflict over how genuine the letter had been. How could someone from fifty years ago even know that Alyson would exist?
But everyone was very polite and openminded, which surprised me, although maybe it shouldn’t have. After all, this was a group of supportive, openminded individuals. And also, I was there. Ha ha.
Rhonda made sympathetic noises and nodded. “What is your intuition telling you, Alyson?”
Alyson sighed, which she had been doing a lot of recently. I didn’t like to see my usually bubbly best friend with the air all knocked out of her like this.
“Well, my intuition is telling me that this letter was from fifty years ago…that it is real in every sense…” She stopped talking and then looked over at me. “But my brain is telling me otherwise. I know that it doesn’t make any sense. I didn’t exist fifty years ago. Heck, I didn’t even exist twenty-nine years ago.”
Rhonda looked unsettled at the thought of Alyson using logic. To be fair, it was usually a sign that Alyson was deathly ill. “Alyson, this isn’t a class about using your brain.”
I cut in. “I know it’s not, Rhonda, and I appreciate what you are trying to do here and the effort you have gone to this evening. But Alyson and I need to leave.” I was making the executive decision. Alyson had JUST started to see sense and Rhonda was only confusing her again. Someone had to be the adult. But Alyson just glared at me like I was raining all over her parade.
Alyson looked at me, looked at Rhonda, and then got up and walked out of the shop. I had to chase after her. I wanted her out of there, just not that quickly. I caught her on the street, shivering. She was still wearing a midriff top and cut-off shorts.
“Which do I believe? My head or my heart?”
“Your head,” I said firmly. For me, there was not even a conflict. As if you should ever listen to anything but your brain? That was what it was there for!
But Alyson just shook her head. “I don’t know which body part to listen to. Or even which family member!”
“Huh?”
She sighed. “It turns out Tina was in town a few days earlier than she said she was.”
Right. So, enough time to have gone to the site of the time capsule and dug it up. I opened my mouth, about to give her another lecture about keeping things from me. But she was fragile. So I decided to make a plan of what to do next.
“Sounds like we need to talk to your cousin.”
It was strange. Coming back to the Dolphin (F)Inn felt like coming home. “Ah, I can almost taste the soggy cornflakes,” I said as we ascended the staircase to the second level. Alyson pointed to the room and said it was where her mum had been staying. “Hey, that was my room,” I said, feeling weirdly possessive of it. As though no one else was allowed to stay in there after my reign had come to an end.
“I know,” she said, raising an eyebrow. “Don’t tell me you’re considering leaving the Turtle Dove and coming back here?”
No. That would be insane. That would be something Alyson would do.
We walked down the corridor while Alyson pointed out the rooms of her other relatives. “Dad’s in there,” she said with a scoff and quickly marched past. “Aunt Daisy moved into that one after J needed her room back…” And then we finally arrived at Tina’s room.
“She’s in there,” Alyson said, listening to the TV playing through the door. It certainly sounded occupied.
Hmmm.
Alyson turned and looked at me. She had decided that before we opened the door and confronted her, we needed a bit of ammunition. Something to confirm what we were accusing her of. “Are you still on good terms with the reception desk?”
The Dolphin (F)Inn was in general a little bit of an impersonal affair. As far as “room service” went, it was a matter of checking a box before you went to bed, putting it through the slot, and then waking up to breakfast on the front doorstep the next morning. And when I’d checked out, I’d just thrown my keys into the deposit box and left without saying good-bye to a soul. No one really paid too much attention to who was coming and going around there. But I was hoping that after two months of living there, I had achieved at least a little bit of a rapport with Deena, who—at least in theory—ran reception and kept a record of when guests checked in and out.
Deena was chewing on one of her long fake nails and looking at her phone with her other hand, giggling at something on the
screen when we walked back up. She barely looked up at me. “Thought you checked out?”
I smiled at her and told her how lovely it was to see her again. I caught Alyson trying not to roll her eyes at my display.
“So, what do you want?” she asked gruffly, flicking her dark curls over her shoulder.
“Can you tell me what date Tina Foulkes checked in?”
She rolled her eyes and went back to her phone. “You know I can’t give out that sort of information.” Yes. I knew that. But this was the Dolphin (F)Inn, not the Four Seasons. Surely she… I caught Alyson giving me a little knowing nod as she left and ran around the corner. What was that supposed to mean? With the look she’d given me, it was as if there was some predetermined plan that I was supposed to know exactly how to follow.
But around the corner, I quickly heard a thud and then the sound of Alyson screaming, calling out that she had twisted her ankle on the motel property and that she was going to sue them for every dollar they had. Deena put her phone down and ran around the corner. Right. That was her plan—create a distraction.
I just hoped she hadn’t twisted her ankle for real. I figured it was probably a fifty-fifty chance.
But I only had a minute or two before Deena came back. So I quickly ran around behind the desk, grabbed the book, and flipped through the pages to the week before.
“She checked in on…”
Shoot. I could hear Deena loudly telling Alyson that she was fine and that she’d better get off the motel property before Deena called the cops for trespassing.
Alyson was gasping as she ran back to me. I’d thought Deena would still be friendly with me, but she yelled at us both to ‘rack off,’ and so I had the indignity of running off the property in my heels. Great plan, Alyson.
When we hit the road, I told Alyson what I had seen. The date of Tina’s check-in. Saturday, a week before.
Hang Ten Australian Cozy Mystery Boxed Set Page 34
